


The Guardian

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angry Dean Winchester, Crying Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester Needs Hugs, Gen, Guilty Dean Winchester, Guilty Sam Winchester, Hunt Gone Wrong, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Protective Dean Winchester, Unconscious Castiel (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 02:58:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18241010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Dean is confined to the bunker, as it’s the only place he’s safe from Michael.That means Sam and Cas are out there hunting without him, and that means he can’t be there to keep them safe.They’re his family.  That’s his job.





	The Guardian

**Author's Note:**

> I always feel like Dean’s the guardian of his wee family, first when it was just Sam and now it’s Sam and Cas, and when anything happens to them he takes it on himself whether it was actually his fault or not.
> 
> Cas is dinged up, but will be okay.

When the first words out of Sam’s mouth are “He’s fine, Dean, I swear to _God_ ,” Dean knows it means that Cas is definitely _not_ fine.

He’s sitting at the library table when he hears them. His phone is there, fully charged and with full reception; his backup phone is charging in the corner; his laptop is turned on and logged into his email.

So there is absolutely no reason why the first time he knows something went wrong is Sam insisting Cas _is fine_ and then half carrying said angel to the top of the stairs.

Dean’s half way up before Sam can take another step, and he stops, eyes wide at the sight of them.

Cas’s skin is the colour of milk; he looks like he doesn’t have an ounce of blood in him, and that might be because most of it is staining his shirt.

The tails are untucked, practically nudity for Cas, and Dean can see the swell of a dressing even below the loose fabric.

He’s leaning into Sam as if Sam’s presence and strength are the only things keeping him upright and on his feet.

When he takes, or tries to, a stubborn step forward, and immediately starts to sway, Dean figures that’s about right.

He launches himself up the rest of the way, and catches the angel before he can fall, _again_ , and Sam has him too, and they end up in a kind of awkward hunter-angel-hunter sandwich at the top of the stairs.

“What the hell happened?” Dean demands.

Sam meets his eyes, but it’s a struggle, because clearly he can remember Dean’s last words as they both left the day before.

 _Do not let each other get hurt_.

++

Sam has to hand it to Michael; he’s certainly a genius level Dr. Moreau when it comes to all these creatures he’s cobbling together.

So far, this month alone, they’ve put down a vampire-ghoul, a were-snake, and some kind of human leech and that last one alone will give Sam nightmares for years to come.

Every hunt makes them feel like newbies; it’s like Michael’s torn up all the rules, and ripped the ground and their twenty plus years of experience out from under them.

Everything is different, now.

And so much more dangerous than it was before.

It doesn’t help that Dean can’t leave the bunker. They need him out here, his skill, his judgement, but the new wards Rowena and Cas managed to tinker up only work on the bunker itself; in there, Dean is safe from Michael reclaiming him.

The minute he sets foot outside the door, he _is_ an open door, and they have no way to shut it.

Their angel and the witch are working on a portable version, maybe a tattoo or a charm Dean can wear (the tattoo being preferable; it can’t fall off during a fight, or if Dean moves around in his sleep) but until then, Dean’s stuck home, under house arrest, but safe.

He hates it.

They hate it too, but they’d hate to lose him more.

Still, they have this, and Dean knows it, even if the last thing he’d said to them as they left was to make sure neither of them let the other get hurt.

Sam hadn’t minded too much; Dean had always seen himself as the sheepdog to their flock, always fretting when either of them were out of his sight for too long.

Even so, he’d wanted to tell Dean they had this, and not just to reassure his brother; they were both competent. Whatever Michael had hotch-potched up this time, presuming it was even anything to do with him, they’d handle it.

Those words feel like they’re taunting Sam now, because Cas had only gone to tell the manager they’d be staying another night, and that should have taken five minutes tops, and he still isn’t back.

Sam finds the manager’s office locked up, and that isn’t right, because this motel is open 24/7, and the guy was on duty when they rolled in there earlier just before midnight.

Where the hell is he now, and where is Cas?

He finds a clue on the corner, at the foot of the stairs that lead up to the manager’s accommodation.

It’s Cas’s FBI ID.

Sam can think of only two reasons why it’d be lying there.

One is that Cas got jumped and it was dropped in the struggle, because the angel isn’t clumsy and he isn’t careless.

The other is that Cas dropped it on purpose, because he got snatched, and he wanted to leave something to tell Sam where he’d been taken.

As it turns out, it’s a bit of both.

++

Cas groans as they set him down on the infirmary bed.

Dean tilts the overhead light so he can get a clearer look at the damage, and pulls on a pair of latex gloves.

Sam’s done the same, and they carefully peel back the bloody shirt to reveal the dressing Dean had spotted earlier.

It’s bulky, clearly done in haste, so Dean isn’t expecting anything too smart underneath it.

He’s not disappointed.

It looks like something with a mouth as big as Dean’s head sank its teeth into the angel; each individual bite mark is deep and Dean gets the impression of a wicked inward curve, the outer marks the deepest, with shallower triangular incisions in between.

No wonder he’s still bleeding out, with some kind of viscous gunk seeping from the wound.

He shoots Sam a furious look, wordlessly demanding an explanation for why Cas is in this condition, how he _got_ in this condition in the first place.

“We had to get out of there, after,” Sam says. “There wasn’t time to treat it properly.”

Dean thinks of the hours it took them to get to that hunt, and the hours it took to get back, Cas bleeding, hurting, the whole way, and still not a single phone call or text to him to tell him something went wrong.

That Cas was hurt.

Sam seems to read his mind. “If I had called you, we both know you’d have got in Cas’s truck and drove straight out of here to get us. And you’d never have made it, because Michael would just have snuck right back in before you hit town.”

It doesn’t calm Dean’s anger in the slightest.

None of this should have happened, and Cas certainly shouldn’t be lying there with his side nearly torn open, leaking some kind of venom, and taped up with a half-assed field dressing.

“You didn’t even have time to clean it out?”

“No,” Sam says.

++

Sam kicks in the door.

It all makes sense, then. He was the one to book them the room when they arrived, and the manager looked human. He processed Sam’s card, and got him to sign the register, and handed over his key, and gave him the standard lecture about non paying guests, and no music or alcohol or drugs, and never in all of that had Sam thought he was anything other than a bored overweight guy doing a job that he hated.

But Cas…. Sam realises if he’d taken Cas in with him, then the hunt would have been over pretty sharp.

After, when Sam’s trying to drive the car with one hand, and put pressure on Cas’s wound with the other, hating himself for the way it makes Cas groan and try to pull away, he finds out that Cas and the manager both saw each other for what they _really_ were in that same instant, and the other guy was just quicker to the draw.

Cas fought, but the guy spit something at him, and the minute it touched Cas’s skin, his whole body seemed to go lax.

He was still able to struggle as he was hauled upstairs, drop his FBI badge in the hope Sam would realise something was wrong and come after him.

Which Sam does, because they will always come for each other.

Sometimes it’s just in the nick of time, or almost.

Cas is still struggling, and Sam is raising his gun as the manager licks a strip down the angel’s chest and then rears his head.

His mouth opens wider than any human mouth should be able to; he can see the muscles under the skin stretching wide, like a snake’s, and then he lashes forward, burying curved fangs into Cas’s side.

Cas screams, and Sam has to risk it. He fires two shots, confident of his aim, but still scared of shooting in such close proximity to Cas.

Both bullets find their mark, and the guy howls in pain, and his jaws unhinge from Cas’s side; he staggers back, but he isn’t going down.

His eyes gleam a hateful yellow, and Sam can see he’s about to be rushed.

But then the guy looks like he’s choking; his throat bulges, his cheeks swell (only later wil Sam learn how close he was to ending up paralysed on the floor), and it’s like he’s about to cough up a furball or something.

It doesn’t happen.

Cas staggers into him, and slams his angel blade straight into his chest.

For all Michael’s skill in Frankensteining these things, he can’t make them immortal.

But he sure knows how to give them the ability to make people hurt.

++

It takes nearly a full hour of flushing out Cas’s wound with saline before all they get from it is water and blood.

Dean does the stitching; his is neater than Sam’s, not that it matters because when Cas is stronger, he’ll just heal the damage anyway, but until then they need to stop the bleeding and a pressure bandage just won’t cut it.

Sam watches him work, quietly, grateful that the morphine they gave Cas has knocked him cold, helped along by the venom from whatever creature the manager turned out to be be.

“You okay,” he asks finally, and Dean pauses mid stitch, and looks over at his brother, sitting on the other infirmary bed.

“Well, I’m better than Cas,” he says, and gets a wince, and kind of hates himself for the bitter satisfaction he feels at that.

“Look, Dean,” Sam starts, but Dean shuts him up with a shake of his head.

He’s angry at them both, too angry to hear Sam, now, try to justify them one of them getting badly hurt, nearly both of them, and for Cas to do the same thing later.

Though maybe he’ll have calmed down by the time Cas wakes up, but he doubts it.

And at the same time, he knows, _knows_ , he’s being an ass over this. It took Cas to realise the thing they were hunting was right there in front of them, and that was sheer luck that he went into the manager’s office the second time instead of Sam.

It wouldn’t have gone any differently if Dean had been there, except that scared, hurt, furious voice in his head is insisting it would have because this is what happens when he isn’t there to protect his family.

 _And whose fault is it, Dean, that you weren’t there_?

He looks down at the bite wound on Cas, still bleeding if not as bad as before; looks over at Sam, knows they both survived, pushed through, saved each other and killed whatever that son of a bitch was.

Knows they’ve always got each other’s backs, and his, knows they’re both tough.

But they’re his, and it’s his job to keep them safe, even if really he knows there’s no such thing in their lives.

Right now, it feels this thing with Michael means he can’t even get to try, and this is the result.

By the time he’s done stitching, his vision is starting to blur, and the hate he feels for himself is burning down his throat and into his chest like acid.

Sam pulls him back, and into his arms, and holds on even when Dean struggles and tries to pull free. But he can’t; he feels like he’s the one who got whammied, or maybe on some level he just knows he needs this.

“Cas’ll be okay,” Sam says. “I’m okay. You’re going to be okay too, Dean. We are not going to let him get hold of you again.”

Dean clings to his little brother, unashamed, looks down at their stricken but healing angel, and hopes to God Sam’s right.

His family need him.

He needs them.


End file.
